Articles - Page 3

Bland Brands Beware: Optimizely’s New Identity Brings Human Creativity to its Agentic AI and AEO Ambitions

matt-garrepy

Life after FAIR? Don’t despair. The pivot to TYPO3 could unlock the future of open source CMS

The Last Migration: Why Universities Keep Paying for Platforms That Don't Evolve

isabellaotero

HubSpot Puts Context on the Spot, Enhancing AEO and Agents to Help Marketers Win AI Search

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/isabellaotero">Bastian Sirvend</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is a CMS/DXP expert and analyst, founder of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://sutsche.com/">SUTSCHE</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.enhancely.ai/">enhancely.ai</a>, and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> We’ve installed <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpress/">EmDash, Cloudflare’s new open-source CMS,</a> which was released on April 1st. No joke, even if the timing looked like one. Naturally, we were curious, as LinkedIn and the like were bursting at the seams with posts about EmDash’s tech and functionality, and how it’s supposedly the “WordPress killer.”Since we’d already got it up and running, we went straight to building a plugin for <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.enhancely.ai/">enhancely.ai</a>, our automation platform that addresses a critical gap in web content: broken or missing structured data. It instantly generates schema markup, enabling AI tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a> to better understand website content without requiring manual rewrites.Automated schema markup without an editor having to lift a finger. I'm happy to report that it all worked: A fully functional CMS in what felt like an hour, with a plugin created and packaged. We even found a bug in EmDash along the way, fixed it, and submitted a pull request. What a day.And ever since then, one question has been on my mind: how will this change the way we select a CMS? There's a lot to unpack here, but let's start with how we've been doing it up until now — and why I believe EmDash is changing things. <h3 id="how-to-select-a-cms:-the-sutsche-approach">How to select a CMS: The SUTSCHE approach</h3>When our team at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://sutsche.com/">SUTSCHE</a> supports clients in selecting a system, we consider the decision from five different angles: <ol><li>How well does the system meet the functional requirements? </li><li>How does it fit into the overall picture, both technically and architecturally? </li><li>How does it perform within the ecosystem, in integrations, and in interfaces? </li><li>What are the financial and strategic implications — both now and in three years? </li><li>And how will it actually be adopted and operated by the people within the organisation?</li></ol><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:93.64%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/bildschirmfoto-2026-04-03-um-22.png" /></figure>Five comprehensive dimensions. Not just a checklist.That's always been our approach. Because choosing a CMS isn’t just about features. It’s a decision about the foundation on which a company builds its content. It’s about the paths that lead to the website or shop, not just a piece of software where you tick boxes. Ultimately, it’s a project you’re buying, and that is far more complex than mere functionality.Then <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP servers</a> were introduced. A new kind of functionality that's operating on a different level from standard functions that are carried out manually. In short, more than just APIs. Suddenly, tasks that had previously been carried out by hand – content migration, schema adjustments, repetitive administrative tasks — could be handled by agents. The CMS could now be controlled remotely. Manual processes that had been time-consuming for years could suddenly be automated. We've taken this into account in our assessment. A new dimension, a proven framework. Good. That makes sense.<h3 id="but-with-the-release-of-emdash,-something-different-happened-for-me…">But with the release of EmDash, something different happened for me…</h3>Not because it’s MCP-compatible. Not because it’s built on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://astro.build/">Astro</a> or MIT-licensed or can run on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare</a>. Because it was built in two months. By an experienced developer, to be sure. And using AI agents. But still, two months for a complete CMS with an admin panel, plugin system, authentication, migration tool, and MCP server?The step from “agents controlling a CMS” to “agents building a CMS” sounds big. It isn’t anymore.Because it means that features that are still missing today will be there tomorrow, and just a few prompts away. The gap between systems — the gap that has structured the selection process for years — isn’t collapsing dramatically. It’s simply shrinking quietly. And other things that should concern customers within the five dimensions are becoming increasingly important.<h3 id="and-this-is-precisely-where-i-ask-myself,-‘how-does-this-change-the-way-we-make-decisions?’">And this is precisely where I ask myself, ‘How does this change the way we make decisions?’</h3>The functional dimension — does the system have feature X, to what standard, to what extent — has long been the loudest voice in the selection process. It isn’t going to disappear. But it is becoming less prominent. Because the argument that “our competitor doesn’t have that yet” is losing its impact more quickly. Anyone who thinks this is just theory is mistaken. From my own experience, I can say that the author of this document has created a fully functional website based on a CMS using <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview">Claude Code,</a> the documentation for some fairly significant CMS platforms, a template/style guide, and a healthy dose of curiosity. Including a few functional enhancements.Let’s shift perspective and move up a level here, too. While I was moderating a product presentation, the question popped up in a chat: “Please don’t stone me, but what exactly is the difference between <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/typo3">TYPO3</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/umbraco">Umbraco</a>?” An absolutely valid question at first, but one participant’s answer astonished me. “It's the technology stack," they said.Yes, that's true. TYPO3 is PHP, while Umbraco is .NET. But are these still real differentiators? The arguments had already been watered down when it came to clients using agencies to do the programming work. With SaaS, this has been further diluted. And now? In times when IBM shares are plummeting because Claude Code can also speak <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a>, migrating from one technology stack to the next is really just a matter of a prompt and a couple of sharp glances (my old math teacher always used to say when simplifying complex equations, “you just need to take a sharp look once, and then you’ve got it”). Of course, that’s an exaggeration. There’s still quite a bit involved — but the hurdle is eroding more and more.<h3 id="what-remains-are-the-other-four-dimensions-of-decision-making.-and-i-believe-they-are-becoming-more-important-–-not-less-so.">What remains are the other four dimensions of decision-making. And I believe they are becoming more important – not less so.</h3>Who do I entrust my content foundation to in the long term? Who will still be supporting the system in three years? What ecosystem is growing around it? Which partners, which community, which integrations? How does it fit into the organization, into the teams, into the actual work processes? These aren’t new questions. But they’re coming to the forefront. And as I think about it further while writing this, I come to the conclusion that, in the end, it’s still the people, agencies, and project stakeholders who have to bring it to life. No matter what “it” turns out to be. Even with incredibly impressive AI support in feature development, the piece of software must fit into the organization, the IT landscape, and the client’s processes — or find a place there.And as I think about this further, my talk with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/janus-boye">Janus Boye</a> at the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aarhus25.boye-co.com/">Boye Aarhus 25 Conference</a> might become even more important. The point was that, due to the development of AI and the lack of adaptation on the part of customers, something needs to change along the entire value chain.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:89.26%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/boye_adoptiongap.png" /></figure> In my view, the role of agencies needs to change dramatically, away from pure development and away from being a “workshop” and towards becoming consultants. The new agency helps clients with organizational development and process optimization. It helps clients to measure and evaluate what has been built and produced, and then to adapt, refine, and optimize it — so that it works even better for them.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:89.44%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/04/boye_adoptiongap2.png" /></figure> In my presentation, I outlined the role of vendors as enablers. They empower agencies to use the software to ask the right questions of the client and to initiate change, so that the software can truly make a difference. In my view, we may need to rethink or re-evaluate the role of vendors. Beyond a controlled development process, it is perhaps the establishment and empowerment, knowledge transfer, and network design that ultimately bring an ecosystem to life and make the difference. The entire interplay of technology, processes, and collaboration. A genuine network.EmDash currently has no satisfactory answer (at least not yet) to most of the points we consider when selecting systems and what we’ve discussed. Version 0.1.0 is just version 0.1.0. It’s been “on the market” since 2026. No ecosystem. No community. No track record. And I don’t see it as a WordPress killer, either. And as I said, this isn’t based on functionality, tech stack, or anything like that. However, it is a demonstration of what is technically possible. And for some use cases, it’s already a valid choice (quickly creating a landing page, setting up satellite sites, putting up a blackout page, testing a prototype).For us at SUTSCHE, this means we’ve been asking the right questions all along. Not because we foresaw it, but because a structured decision has always been about more than just a list of features. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

After EmDash — what am I actually buying when I choose a CMS?

bastiansirvend

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/scottliewehr">Scott Liewehr</a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau"> </a>is Global Vice President of Market Strategy &amp; Growth at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> I’ve spent over twenty-five years helping organizations communicate with their customers through digital channels. First as an industry analyst and now at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore</a>, I’ve watched this industry invent, reinvent, and re-reinvent concepts like content management and digital experience management so many times I’ve lost count. Yet, through every cycle, one thing remained true: a human created the message, and another human consumed it. The technology was just the delivery mechanism. The fundamental exchange was always human-to-human. H2H, if you will.That’s over. For the marketers who have realized this, there is a quiet, existential grief. We’ve spent decades trying to forge an emotional “spark” between our brand’s soul and a human customer. Admitting that this spark must now travel through a cold, transformer-based intermediary feels like a betrayal of the craft. But ignoring it won't bring back the 'good old days' of direct traffic.<h3 id="where-most-marketers-are-right-now">Where most marketers are right now</h3>Right now, AI is a creation tool. Marketers are using <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/organizations">Copilot</a>, AI agents within their platform – pick your flavor – to draft blog posts, generate ad copy, and produce email variations at scale. The industry is spending a lot of energy debating whether this is going to kill copywriters (it isn’t), whether AI-generated content is “authentic” (depends on who’s using it), and whether we should ban the em dash forever (I refuse!). But while we’re having those debates, something more fundamental is shifting underneath us.What’s happening is simple: AI has inserted itself between the marketer and the audience. The marketer is still a human. The audience is still a human. But the creation process now has a machine in the middle. Call it H2A2H: Human to AI to Human. The AI helps you write more, faster, better. But the brief hasn’t changed. You’re still writing for a person. The buyer is still the target reader. The website visitor is still the audience. The AI is a productivity tool, and the humans on either end of the equation are the ones that matter.This is the state of the art right now. And here’s the thing: most marketing organizations think this is cutting-edge.They’re already behind.<h3 id="the-shift-that-needs-to-happen-next">The shift that needs to happen next</h3>Here’s what needs to change, and what I think most people in our industry haven’t fully internalized yet: the audience has shifted. It’s not just that AI is helping us create content. It’s that AI has become the primary consumer of that content. An LLM crawls your blog post. An answer engine indexes your press release. An agentic search system ingests your product page and synthesizes it alongside your competitors’ claims. And then – and this is the critical part – that AI delivers its own version of your message to the human at the end of the chain.The full sequence is now H2A→A2H: Human to AI to AI to Human. The first A helps you create. The second A decides whether and how your brand shows up when a customer asks a question. That second A is the new gatekeeper. And here’s what makes it especially interesting: that second AI has something you’ve never had. It has real-time context about exactly what the person on the other end is looking for.Most marketers haven’t noticed the ground shifting. Even the AEO/GEO crowd – the Answer Engine Optimization and Generative Engine Optimization folks – are trapped in H2A2H thinking. They’re adding FAQ blocks and schema markup to every page, treating machine-readability as an afterthought to human-centric design. Their goal is to make human content “parseable” by LLMs. That’s a search engine mindset in a synthesizer world. These marketers are still trying to rank first in a list. But in an H2A→A2H reality, the list doesn’t exist. There is only one single, synthesized answer. And if your brand isn't part of that synthesis, you don't just rank low, you don't exist.<h3 id="the-brief-changes">The Brief Changes</h3>If all of this is true – and I believe it is – then the creative brief has to change. Consider the evolution:<ul><li>H2H: “Write something compelling for our target buyer to read.”</li><li>H2A2H: “Use AI to write something compelling for our target buyer to read. Oh, and add some structured data so LLMs can parse it too.”</li><li>H2A→A2H: “Use AI to create content that an LLM will select as the authoritative source and deliver to a buyer in exactly the context they need – because the LLM knows what they’re looking for better than we do.”</li></ul>Read those three briefs again. The first two are variations of the same job: write for a human. The third is a genuinely different job. You’re no longer crafting a message for someone to consume directly. You’re crafting raw material for an AI to carry faithfully to a person. That distinction – crafting for direct consumption versus crafting for faithful carriage – is, I think, the strategic pivot of the next decade in content marketing. And almost nobody is talking about it.<h3 id="why-the-second-‘a’-is-a-better-personalizer-than-you-are">Why the second ‘A’ is a better personalizer than you are</h3>Here’s the part of this argument that marketers will find most uncomfortable: the LLM on the other end of this chain is better at serving your customer than you are.When you write a blog post or a product page, you’re writing for a segment – “a senior decision-maker at a mid-to-large enterprise.” You’re crafting a message for thousands of people who happen to share a few demographic traits. That isn’t personalization; it’s just better than average guessing, and we’ve been pretending it’s enough for two decades. The LLM doesn’t guess. It knows the exact question being asked. It knows the conversational context, the specific level of detail required, and increasingly, the user’s entire preferences and history. It takes your content and delivers precisely the answer that person needs, in the tone they want, contextualized against everything else they’ve researched. The second A has you beat on last-mile delivery, and the gap is widening.So, the logical question is: if the AI is going to handle the final delivery anyway, and it’s going to do a better job of contextualizing and personalizing than you can, then what exactly should you be optimizing for? The answer is: give the second A the best possible raw material. When I say, 'raw material,' I’m not talking about a prettier PDF or a blog post with better keywords. I’m talking about high-density brand truths. If you sell enterprise software, your 'raw material' is no longer a flowery case study; it is a structured, verifiable data set of your specific capabilities, compliance standards, and pricing logic that an agentic system can ingest without hallucinating. You are building an authoritative 'knowledge graph' for the machine to carry, not a brochure for a human to skim.<h3 id="the-expectation-ratchet">The expectation ratchet</h3>This shift isn’t going to reverse itself. In fact, I think the pace is going to catch most of the industry off guard.Every time an LLM provides a genuinely contextual, synthesized answer to a specific question, it raises the bar for what a human expects from information. Once you’ve asked a nuanced question and received a tailored, multi-source answer in 12 seconds – whether it’s about running shoes for flat feet or enterprise platforms that handle regulated content – browsing a website feels like thumbing through a phone book. And you don’t go back. You just don’t.I’ve been ringing the alarm about the obsolescence of various web paradigms since the WCM era (I even wrote for Inside CXM back in 2013 about how <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://digitalclaritygroup.com/archives/netflix-you-dont-know-diddly-about-context">Netflix was missing the mark on context</a>). But this is different. This isn’t about making the website; it’s about the website becoming a secondary delivery channel entirely. AI-referred web sessions surged 527% year-over-year in the first half of 2025. That isn’t just a trend line. It’s the foot of a curve. The website won’t die, but its primary purpose fundamentally shifts from a “destination for humans” to “content engine that feeds the AI layer.”<h3 id="the-invisible-editor">The invisible editor</h3>This is the part that keeps me up at night: the second A in H2A→A2H is, functionally, an editor. When a customer asks an LLM about your category, the model assembles an answer by making editorial decisions: which sources to cite, which claims to foreground, which brands to ignore. It’s curating and compressing your brand’s message in real time, at scale, millions of times a day, all with zero human oversight.You can’t pitch this editor. You can’t take it to lunch. You can’t send it an embargo or a press release with a personalized note. Trust me, I’ve spent enough time on both sides of the analyst and media relationship to know the value of those things, and they are useless here. The only way to influence the AI editor is by the quality of the raw material you feed it. Substance. Structure. Authority. Specificity. That’s it.Here’s the paradox: this shift should make brands more distinctive, not less. While everyone fears AI will homogenize communication, the opposite is happening. The AI editor is a clarity machine; it rewards the signal and incinerates the noise. Generic messaging gets compressed into noise. Bold, specific, and well-structured positions get cited. It rewards the brands that actually have something to say and punishes those running on platitudes. We’ve spent years hiding behind “marketing speak” that says nothing. Now, there’s a machine that can tell the difference. And it’s making editorial decisions about your brand accordingly.<h3 id="it’s-not-replacement.-the-reader-changed.">It’s not replacement. The reader changed.</h3>The marketer’s job hasn’t disappeared; the audience has simply evolved. Human judgment, brand instinct, strategic positioning, and point of view are more critical now than ever, because they are the only qualities that survive the compression of the second A. Everything else gets flattened. The premium on human thinking – real, substantive thinking, not “thought leadership” that says nothing – has never been higher.We are no longer crafting messages for a person to read on a screen. We are crafting substance for a machine to carry faithfully to a person. And if you get the substance right – if your ideas are clear, your data is solid, your point of view is genuinely distinctive – that machine will deliver your message with more precision and effectiveness than any website or email campaign in history.The flow has fundamentally changed: Humans create (with AI) for AI, and AI carries it to humans. It's H2A→A2H. This isn’t a 5-year roadmap; it’s a reality unfolding in months. But the ones who embrace it won’t just have a competitive advantage. They’ll be the only ones whose brands even show up. The question is whether you’ll be one of them. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

You’re Writing for the Wrong Audience

scottliewehr

Sweet FlowMotion: Storyblok Transforms Content Updates into Automated Workflows

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

Matt & Matt, Episode 3: Broadway, Serendipity, Product Evangelism, and the New Rules of AI Visibility 

cms-critic-staff

Axe the ‘Coordination Tax’: New data says CX teams are struggling – and AI isn’t helping

Forget the SaaS eulogy. Software isn’t dead – but hiding behind it? That's six feet under

Adam Greco’s New Book on Product Evangelism Puts a Spotlight on Humans in an AI World

Matt & Matt, Episode 2: Awards Season, a (Chilled) Canadian Meetup, GEO, ‘Dirty Data,’ and More

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<hr /> 100 billion. It’s a big number. Hang on. A little context makes it even bigger: It would take a human approximately 9,513 years to count that high. Assuming they could recite one number every 3 seconds, non-stop, 24 hours a day.For <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/auxia">Auxia</a> – the customer journey orchestration platform that delivers AI-powered, hyper-personalized customer experiences – that figure is a reality. The company just announced that it has delivered 100 billion cumulative decisions on behalf of its customers. Even more impressive? Auxia’s AI agents now power roughly 400 million autonomous decisions every day, handling tasks like content selection, optimization timing, and determining next-best actions for individual users across channels like web, app, email, and more – all while processing 200 petabytes of first-party data annually.Not bad for a scale-up that’s only been around since 2022. But these numbers are more than just an expression of performance. They’re a clear signal that enterprise marketing teams are successfully breaking through the failures of early Gen AI projects – which have persistently plagued organizations – and deploying stable and scalable agentic systems that deliver revenue.  <figure class="image image_resized" style="width:37.86%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/03/image-1773341679320.png" /></figure>Auxia CEO and co-founder Sandeep Menon. Source: LinkedIn When I spoke to Auxia’s CEO and co-founder <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeep-menon-1087901/">Sandeep Menon</a> last October, he was fired up about the opportunity to bridge the gap that marketers have between content and context, and how Auxia enables teams to harness their first-party data and seamlessly orchestrate 1:1, adaptive, hyper-personalized customer journeys. As he framed it, agentic AI was the key to the next wave.“We’re really trying to be an agentic customer journey orchestration platform,” he told me. “We are going from the ‘Old World,’ which is about static, rule-based systems, to one that is much more dynamic.”Auxia has been on a steady tear since 2024, adding several Fortune 1000 clients and delivering stellar results. That led to a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/auxia-raises-23-5-million-to-tackle-enterprise-marketings-reacquisition-treadmill">$23.5 million Series A</a> funding round. With cash in hand and an executive heritage from Google and Meta, the company has made significant gains towards its agentic ambitions, where AI is truly impacting outcomes.“We thought, wouldn't it be great if we kind of reimagined how a marketer's workflow should be in the age of AI?” he said previously. “The way it would work, in our perspective, is that you would always have a set of agents working in the background for you and surfacing insights. And then you – as a marketer – can go and look at those insights and then direct other agents to determine what action needs to be taken.”This vision sounds great. But herein lies the challenge: most enterprises are still stuck with legacy marketing stacks that limit their AI agility. There’s fatigue, cognitive overload, and a real hunger for more automation to lighten the load without compromising success. This is where Auxia is providing a pathway to an agent-powered “promised land” with real, quantifiable results. “Enterprise leaders are replacing rigid, rules-based marketing stacks with intelligent agents that optimize customer value in real time,” Sandeep said. “One hundred billion decisions is not just a scale milestone – it is proof that agentic AI delivers measurable top-line impact, not just operational efficiency.”<h3 id="real-impact-and-measurable-business-outcomes">Real impact and measurable business outcomes</h3>Customer journey orchestration (CJO) platforms help businesses to manage, automate, and personalize customer interactions across multiple touchpoints in real-time, using data-driven insights to improve engagement. The tighter integration of communication channels and dynamic personalization can enrich those touchpoints across previously fragmented interactions, so you can proactively guide customers to a conversion from any point in the lifecycle.Like every other segment of software, AI has been changing the game. Auxia’s AI-native solution autonomously determines the best experience for customers by orchestrating cross-channel, real-time journeys across web, app, email, and SMS while optimizing for business goals like activation, retention, cross-sell, and lifetime value. CJO stalwarts like Braze, Insider One, HubSpot, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud are all moving in the agentic direction, but Auxia is taking a unique approach as a challenger.Even today, only a small number of enterprises have what we could call “sustainable” agentic systems. According to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/agentic-panic-new-study-finds-ai-agents-in-production-face-infrastructure-and-reliability-challenges">research by Cleanlab</a>, these systems face significant hurdles, in part because change is fluid. And aside from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP (Model Context Protocol),</a> large-scale industry standards don’t yet exist.Said another way: We’re still in the early days, and many organizations are still struggling to get their GenAI initiatives to production, let alone their agent ecosystems.But Auxia’s growth might be an indicator that the conditions are changing. As Sandeep told me last year, the company’s focus on delivery has been key to its growth, and is reflected in how they engage with enterprise customers – even from a pricing perspective.“We are very focused on outcomes,” he said. “So a typical engagement would involve going deep into one specific marketing journey or use case that the enterprise wants to transform. Once we identify the use case, then we deploy our system, and the pricing is based on the volume of decisions they take and the usage there.”There were certainly some notable use cases of Auxia’s success in 2025. In one example, a single enterprise deployment generated $12 million in incremental revenue impact within its first year on the platform. Customers also saw CTRs increase by 5x and cross-sell lifetime value rise 84% compared to prior rules-based systems – with implementations completed in weeks, not months.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.auxia.io/blog/100-billion-decisions-and-counting">According to Auxia,</a> one customer even achieved a stunning 50x increase in new sign-ups after replacing a rules-based personalization stack with Auxia’s agent-driven approach. Impressive.Auxia is now powering solutions across the Fortune 500, Global 2000, and industry leaders in media, SaaS, insurance, mobile, and entertainment. In terms of brands, the company has added visible industry leaders like Atlassian, Assurant, The Guardian, Comcast, Mercari, and more to its roster. <h3 id="continued-product-innovation,-scale,-and-growth">Continued product innovation, scale, and growth</h3>Auxia has been steadily advancing its global ambitions. To meet the shifting policy and regulatory landscape, the platform has been built with enterprise-grade security, privacy, and reliability at a core level. This includes SOC 2 Type II certification, GDPR compliance, and more. While its agentic roadmap has also been rapidly evolving, Auxia has been innovating for quite some time. Last July, it released an enhanced version of its AI <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250709871181/en/Auxia-Announces-New-AI-Analyst-Agent-to-Help-Marketing-Teams-Convert-Campaign-Data-Into-Revenue-Insights">Analyst agent,</a> which uses a natural language interface to provide marketing teams with high-speed insights into campaign performance. Before, it was hard to know why AI-powered campaigns were succeeding or failing without complex data analysis. Now, marketers can just ask Auxia’s agent for the answers, effectively giving them a dedicated data scientist. <img style="width:84.68%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/auxia-featured-2.jpg" alt="Auxia screenshot" />Auxia UX. Source: Auxia Towards the end of last year, they also introduced <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fcmscritic.com%2Fone-ux-to-rule-them-all-auxia-powers-customer-journeys-with-ai-agents-in-new-unified-experience&amp;esheet=54444340&amp;newsitemid=20260311815297&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=a+unified+interface&amp;index=3&amp;md5=c116cb4cb0570b1e9841ffecf1c444ca">a new unified interface</a> that brings decisioning, content generation, and insights into a single view, enabling marketing teams to manage AI-driven campaigns without technical resources.As Sandeep explained to me during the launch, the new UX also introduced the concept of a “Spark” – a moment of insight that agents uncover and proactively surface for marketers inside a unified dashboard, where it is ranked based on overall confidence. Campaigns are also organized into core marketing workflows called Journeys that align with customer needs. Under it all, Auxia has also expanded its infrastructure capabilities, scaling the platform to handle over 10 billion events per day, with peak loads of 15,000 queries per second. That reflects a 3x increase in capacity since early 2025.According to Auxia’s press release, there’s been rapid customer adoption and expansion. The product has been deployed across more teams, channels, and use cases, growing monthly decisions per customer to 6x year-over-year, and generating a heathy 176% net dollar retention (NDR) rate.Along with expanding its global footprint to include offices in Palo Alto, Tokyo, and Bangalore, Auxia has also quadrupled its headcount with several key hires. Clearly a sign that it’s bullish about the opportunities ahead.<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>As I noted last year, AI-powered customer journey orchestration is unlocking key benefits for marketers as they look to scale hyper-personalization. Auxia’s vision has drawn real interest and vigor, and they’ve secured the funding to drive the company’s roadmap towards its agentic ambitions.We’re seeing the fruits of those labors – and not just in Auxia’s net gains. The platform’s surpassing of 100 billion autonomous decisions is a clear signal that AI agents are performing with real outcomes.As I said previously, I like the composable, agnostic nature of the product. As Sandeep explained in our last conversation, they work natively at the cloud layer, and they’re able to play with CMS and enhance 1:1 personalization with content decisioning via their agents.“We connect to content management systems, where you can use our agents to determine what is the right content to showcase to somebody at a point in time in their journey to get them to the objective,” he said. My recommendation: Auxia offers a great market alternative with a clear AI-forward motion towards an agentic marketing platform. Like all CJO products, you’ll want to request a demo and play close attention to how data sources are handled, the usability of workflows, and what native channels you’ll want to use now – and in the future. Customer journey tools are all about experimentation, so you’ll need real-world stakes to fully test and optimize, but you can get a sense in a demo of how granular the personalization is and how you can tailor it. Definitely worth a closer look as you explore options.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.auxia.io/demo">You can request a demo here.</a> <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:34.15%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/logo_jday_hor.png" /><h4 id="joomladay-usa-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/">JoomlaDay USA 2026</a></h4>April 29 - May 2, 2026 – Delray Beach, FloridaBe part of the Joomla community in one of the most iconic cities in the world! JoomlaDay USA 2026 is coming to Delray Beach, and you can join us for a dynamic event packed with insights, workshops, and networking opportunities. Learn from top Joomla experts and developers offering valuable insights and real-world solutions. Participate in interactive workshops and sessions and enhance your skills in Joomla management, development, design, and more. And connect with fellow Joomla enthusiasts, developers, and professionals from across the world.<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.jdayusa.com/"> Book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.06%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/cms-summit-26-logo.jpg" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-summit-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26">CMS Summit 26</a></h4>May 12-13, 2026 – Frankfurt, GermanyThe best conferences create space for honest, experience-based conversations. Not sales pitches. Not hype. Just thoughtful exchanges between people who spend their days designing, building, running, and evolving digital experiences. CMS Summit brings together people who share real stories from their work and platforms and who are interested in learning from each other on how to make things better. Over two days in Frankfurt, you can expect practitioner-led talks grounded in experience, conversations about trade-offs, constraints, and decisions, and time to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges. Space is limited for this exclusive event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmssummit26/tickets">so book your seats today.</a> <img style="width:30.13%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/12/image-1765546475634.png" /><h4 id="umbraco-codegarden-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Umbraco Codegarden 2026</a></h4>June 10–11, 2026 – Copenhagen, DKJoin us in Copenhagen (or online) for the biggest Umbraco conference in the world – two full days of learning, genuine conversations, and the kind of inspiration that brings business leaders, developers, and digital creators together. Codegarden 2026 is packed with both business and tech content, from deep-dive workshops and advanced sessions to real-world case studies and strategy talks. You’ll leave with ideas, strategies, and knowledge you can put into practice immediately. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://codegarden.umbraco.com/">Book your tickets today.</a> <img style="width:36.69%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2026/01/open-source-cms-26.jpg" /><h4 id="open-source-cms-26"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26">Open Source CMS 26</a></h4>October 20–21, 2026 – Utrecht, NetherlandsJoin us for the first annual edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to making open source CMS better. This event is already being called the “missing gathering place” for the open source CMS community – an international conference with confirmed participants from Europe and North America. Be part of a friendly mix of digital leaders from notable open source CMS projects, agencies, even a few industry analysts who get together to learn, network, and talk about what really matters when it comes to creating better open source CMS projects right now and for the foreseeable future. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/opensourcecms26/tickets">Book your tickets today.</a>

100 Billion Autonomous Decisions? Auxia’s AI Agents Signal a Big Shift for Enterprise Marketing

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